Oxford Level 7 Stories
The Willow Pattern Plot
Teaching Notes Authors: Lucy Tritton and Liz Miles
Comprehension strategies
Tricky words
• Comprehension strategies are taught
throughout the Teaching Notes to enable
pupils to understand what they are reading
in books that they can read independently.
In these Teaching Notes the following
strategies are taught:
Prediction, Questioning, Clarifying,
Summarising, Imagining
bought, called, caught, cruel, friends, gasped, heard, loved, oh, ready,
something, sound, waited
= Language comprehension
= Word recognition
Group or guided reading
Introducing the book
•Discuss the cover and read the title with the children. Establish any knowledge the children may
already have about willow pattern pottery.
(Prediction) Ask the children to read the back cover blurb and ask them to say what they think will
happen in the story.
•Look briefly through the book to confirm the children’s ideas. Use some of the decodable and tricky
words as you discuss some of the pictures.
Strategy check
Remind the children to try various strategies to work out new or unfamiliar words.
Independent reading
•Ask the children to read the story. Praise and encourage them while they read, and prompt
as necessary.
(Clarifying) Ask occasional questions about the story to make sure the children understand what is
happening: Why are the people in the story dressed differently from Biff, Chip and Nadim? Why did
the guards trip over on the bridge?
(Summarising) Ask children to retell the story in just four or five sentences.
Check that children:
•use phonic knowledge to sound out and blend the phonemes in words, particularly the tricky words
•read with appropriate expression, pausing at commas, and changing tone for exclamations and questions.
Returning to the text
(Questioning, Clarifying) Ask the children: Why was Kim Shee unhappy? Why couldn’t she marry Chang, the
man she loved? Why do you think her father wanted her to marry a rich man?
(Summarising, Prediction) Ask children to describe the land where Chang and Kim live. Ask: Which country
do you think this story is set in? (China).
On page 11 point to the word ‘cruel’ and help children to sound it out. Point out how ‘uel’ makes
one sound.
(Imagining) Look at pages 8–9. Ask the children to imagine living in a world that was just one colour.
Ask: Would you like it? Which colour would you choose? What colours would you miss?
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© Oxford University Press 2014
Group and independent reading activities
Read independently and with increasing fluency longer and less familiar texts. Know how to tackle
unfamiliar words that are not completely decodable.
Ask children to read pages 1–3 alone.
•Ask them to copy down any words they find difficult. Pool the words and ask volunteers to suggest
strategies for working them out.
•Ask children to spell the word without looking at it. Repeat for the next few pages of the story.
Do the children suggest a range of strategies for working out the words?
Spell with increasing accuracy and confidence, drawing on word recognition and knowledge of word
structure, and spelling patterns.
You will need to write the following words on the board: ‘like’, ‘kind’, ‘do’, ‘appear’, ‘tidy’.
Talk about how the prefixes ‘un- ‘and ‘dis- ‘can change words to mean the opposite.
•Write the word ‘happy’ on the board and ask the children to find the opposite meaning in the text
(page 10).
•Look at the words on the board and ask the children to add the correct prefix to give them the
opposite meaning.
•Ask the children to use a word bank or dictionary to add other similar words to the list.
Do the children reread the word to check it sounds right?
Read and spell less common alternative graphemes including trigraphs.
Turn to page 19 and ask the children to find the word ‘garden’.
•Ask them which two letters make the sound ‘ar’.
•Ask them to find another two words on the same page in which three letters make the same sound
(‘uar’ in ‘guards’ and ‘ten’ in ‘listen’).
•Ask the children to look at page 20 and find a word where four letters make one sound‘ (‘augh’ in ‘caught’).
Are the children able to work out the sounds in the word ‘afraid’?
Draw together ideas and information from across a whole text.
(Summarising) Ask the children to turn to pages 8 and 9, read the description of the garden and look at
the illustration.
•Ask them to tell you the key features of the landscape.
•Write the children’s suggestions on the board, e.g. ‘bridge’, ‘house’, ‘lake’, ‘lemon trees’.
•Encourage the children to tell you what happened at each place.
•Some children could attempt to draw a map of the garden, writing labels and captions to show the
events of the story.
Do the children use the text to retrieve information?
Explain their reactions to texts, commenting on important aspects.
(Clarifying, Imagining) Ask the children to reread the story from page 10, focusing on the sentences that
describe Kim Shee’s father.
•Invite children to tell you what sort of person Kim Shee’s father is. Record their descriptions on
the board.
•Ask: How do you think he felt after his daughter had run away? What advice would you give him?
•Ask: Would the story have been the same if he had let Kim Shee see Chang?
Do the children refer to the text and illustrations for details?
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© Oxford University Press 2014
Speaking, listening and drama activities
Respond to presentations…commenting constructively. Adopt appropriate roles in small or large
groups and consider alternative courses of action. Present part of traditional stories and their own
stories for members of their own class.
•Ask the children to work with a partner. Tell them to take the roles of Kim and Chang and to read the
dialogue from pages 13–16 as if it were a play.
•Next, ask them to make up their own dialogue, but this time to imagine that Chang has his own
plan on how he and Kim can get away from the garden. Ask: What route of escape has he planned?
(e.g. under the bridge). What items will he bring to help them? (e.g. a boat).
•Ask some of the children to perform their new dialogue to the rest of the class or group. Encourage
the ‘audience’ to comment constructively on the group’s performance.
Writing activities
Draw on knowledge and experience of texts in deciding and planning what and how to write.
Compose sentences using tense consistently.
•If possible, show some willow pattern plates to the children.
•Read Nadim’s words on the last page to the children.
•Ask them to suggest other stories for the willow pattern plate. Model how to write some of their
suggestions as opening sentences in the past tense.
•Ask the children to write their own willow pattern stories and illustrate them in blue and white for
a class display.
Is the story well-organised and carefully illustrated?
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© Oxford University Press 2014
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